Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers' Trade Union (SWW­TU), Michael An­nisette, says work­ers of An­gos­tu­ra Ltd are firm in their de­ci­sion not to ac­cept a four per cent wage in­crease, con­tend­ing that in­dus­tri­al ac­tion is pos­si­ble if man­age­ment does not meet with them to fur­ther dis­cus­sions in a time­ly man­ner.

An­nisette led An­gos­tu­ra em­ploy­ees on a brief demon­stra­tion out­side the com­pa­ny's East­ern Main Road, Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille, com­pound yes­ter­day, where they called for high­er wages, adding that they were not af­ford­ed over­time.

Re­fer­ring to a meet­ing with man­age­ment last week, An­nisette ac­cused the com­pa­ny of be­ing "dis­re­spect­ful" as he claimed that they ad­vanced a four per cent of­fer to work­ers.

He ar­gued that the com­pa­ny's pro­duc­tion and earn­ings had grown over the years, not­ing that work­ers formed a crit­i­cal part of the com­pa­ny's out­put, mak­ing them en­ti­tled to ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion.

"Work­ers are los­ing faith in the com­pa­ny be­cause they are see­ing new man­agers com­ing in­to the com­pa­ny with loud salaries."

Re­fer­ring to the up­com­ing Christ­mas and To­ba­go Car­ni­val sea­sons where sales for An­gos­tu­ra's al­co­hol prod­ucts were ex­pect­ed to in­crease, An­nisette said the out­put and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of work­ers could be af­fect­ed if they felt their con­cerns were not ad­dressed.

An­nisette said he felt that the union's po­si­tion was rea­son­able to man­age­ment and would not hin­der their op­er­a­tions or costs.

"We main­tain that what we of­fer, An­gos­tu­ra can pay with­out any form of dis­rup­tions."

He said if no favourable re­sponse was re­ceived at the next meet­ing, there would be "con­se­quences" once he met with work­ers.

One work­er, Ker­win Stew­art, told Guardian Me­dia Ltd that while work­ers weren't en­ti­tled to over­time, he felt that such pro­vi­sions al­lowed him and oth­er work­ers to keep their house­holds afloat giv­en dif­fer­ent fi­nan­cial de­mands.

"Right now I could bare­ly even send my chil­dren to school be­cause of the loans I am pay­ing and the lit­tle ex­tra over­time we used to get be­fore... al­though it's not an en­ti­tle­ment, but work­ers look for­ward to a lit­tle Sat­ur­day (work) in be­tween but it's noth­ing right now. No ex­tras. Just flat salary.

"Peo­ple have house loans, car loans and it just not adding up."

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd via email yes­ter­day, An­gos­tu­ra Ltd not­ed that they val­ued their em­ploy­ees and were com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing a "re­spect­ful, fair and con­struc­tive in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions en­vi­ron­ment."

The com­pa­ny not­ed, how­ev­er, that de­ci­sions re­lat­ing to over­time were guid­ed by op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments and es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al agree­ments.

"Wage ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue through the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process.

"An­gos­tu­ra re­mains com­mit­ted to good-faith di­a­logue with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union, bal­anc­ing em­ploy­ee in­ter­ests with the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny and the pro­tec­tion of em­ploy­ment."